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Friday, 2 March 2012

Why Boardgames being turned into apps is a very good thing

In conjunction with the review for the iOS board game adaptation of "It's Alive" Gametrender was lucky enough to speak to the creator of the app, Jeremy Maher. Jeremy shares an app developers insight into why the boardgames into apps trend is a great idea for the gaming industry as a whole. If you’re interested in becoming a developer, check out Guide to Career
Education to find current colleges offering degrees in web and game
design. Over to App developer Jeremy Maher for his ideas:

"My game ( "Yehuda Berlinger's It's Alive" ) is part of a growing trend of adapting physical board and card games into apps. One of the primary advantages for players is portability, but also the electronic games almost always sell for considerably less than their physical counterparts. With AI (computer) opponents, single players can play by themselves. And in the case of IT'S ALIVE!, the original game had limited distribution and is now out of print, and thus the worldwide availability of my app opens it up to a whole new audience.

Jeremy uses Corona to develop his apps and gives his recommendation and opinions on using the popular SDK to create some world class apps:

"I'm also proud of my accomplishment as a solo developer. This was my first commercial project with Corona, and my first time programming with Lua. As I mentioned, I obviously benefitted from use of the original illustrations, but there was still considerable work adapting them for use in the app. I do regret not being able to offer networked multiplayer features, but they were simply too costly and time consuming"

Here at Gametrender we hope that "It's Alive " will get a ton of downloads for a very good iOS board game adaptation which will help move the app forward with some more exciting features.